Interface to an SD Card

In February 2008 I started a related project: interfacing an AVR to an SD memory card. I was using an ATmega324P MCU on a solderless breadboard. It was wired to an SD card “breakout board” from SparkFun Electronics, and a serial port for connecting to a PC running HyperTerminal.

It didn’t take long to get basic communication with the SD card working, but to make sense of the card contents I had to implement the FAT file system. The idea of doing this was an interesting flashback, since I wrote the original FAT12 file system in 8086 assembly language almost 30 years ago. Now I was using the published Microsoft specification to implement FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and long file names, thankfully in C++ rather than assembly language.

In March I was working (at least some) on the FAT file system almost every day. By the end of the month I had sort of a mini DOS command prompt working, with commands like DIR, CD, and TYPE. I hadn’t attempted to write to the SD card yet.

I didn’t get much more done until June, when I started pushing harder on the AVR network software. I hadn’t worked on this since last August, so some reviewing was necessary to get back into the swing of things. But by the end of the month I had the “Easy Ethernet AVR” module successfully serving up a minimal web page to my PC. The module does not have an SD card (or any other storage), so there was no real content, but it demonstrated success with IP, TCP, and HTTP network protocols.

I needed hardware that combined Ethernet and SD Card, and I set about designing it in July. This design included sockets for both a standard SD Card and a microSD card. My vision for this project was that it would be a home automation controller, communicating by ZigBee radio to other devices around the house. To that end, my engineering prototype included two radio systems: a socket for a MaxStream (now Digi) XBee radio module, and a radio circuit built around the Atmel AT86RF231 ZigBee-compatible transceiver chip. I also switched to a smaller and simpler Ethernet controller chip, the Microchip ENC28J60.

With the design complete and printed circuit board (PCB) laid out, I ordered boards from PCB Fab Express on August 1st. While they were in process I improved my SD card & FAT file system software so it could write to the card as well as read it, which didn’t take long. I also revised the software so it will work with new hardware, including drivers for the alternate Ethernet chip I was using. And of course I ordered the parts I’d need, from my favorite distributor, Digi-Key.

Engineering Prototype. At upper left is the discrete radio circuit, without the antenna jack installed. Below that is the socket for the XBee radio module. At right middle is an ATmega644P MCU. The first unit was built with the pin-compatible ATmega324P, but the program grew beyond its 32K program size limit.

The prototype boards arrived in about three weeks, and I assembled one right away. Within a few days I had it serving up a fake web page (not yet reading it from the SD card). The network protocol analyzer WireShark proved invaluable in getting this working. A few weeks later, on September 11, 2008, the prototype was serving up web pages from the SD card on request – a major milestone.